Northward and southward the great snowy mountains, marshaled
along the axis of the Range, are seen in all their glory, crowded
together in some places like trees in groves, making landscapes of wild,
extravagant, bewildering magnificence, yet calm and silent as the sky.
Some eight glaciers are in sight. One of these is the Dana Glacier on
the north side of the mountain, lying at the foot of a precipice about
a thousand feet high, with a lovely pale-green lake a little below it.
This is one of the many, small, shrunken remnants of the vast glacial
system of the Sierra that once filled the hollows and valleys of
the mountains and covered all the lower ridges below the immediate
summit-fountains, flowing to right and left away from the axis of the
Range, lavishly fed by the snows of the glacial period.
In the excursion to Mount Lyell the immediate base of the mountain is
easily reached on meadow walks along the river. Turning to the southward
above the forks of the river, you enter the narrow Lyell branch of the
Valley, narrow enough and deep enough to be called a canyon. It is about
eight miles long and from 2000 to 3000 feet deep. The flat meadow bottom
is from about three hundred to two hundred yards wide, with gently curved
margins about fifty yards wide from which rise the simple massive walls
of gray granite at an angle of about thirty-three degrees, mostly
timbered with a light growth of pine and streaked in many places with
avalanche channels.
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